(SEE SECOND UPDATE BELOW.) Howard Dean has, of course, been the candidate usually compared to McGovern. But something just dawned on me. If Kerry is nominated, he’ll join McGovern as being the only sitting Senator to run against an incumbent President in the modern electoral era– since Bob Dole resigned from his seat before the […]
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Wacky Warning Labels:
The Seventh Annual Wacky Warning Label Awards are out. Blogger and GMU economics professor Alex Tabarrok won second prize for “Beware: sled may develop high speed under certain snow conditions.” I like the fifth place entry, a smoke detector that read, “Do not use the Silence Feature in emergency situations. It will not extinguish a […]
“[T]he gas chamber horror of North Korea’s gulag”:
From the Guardian (U.K.): Kwon Hyuk, who has changed his name, was the former military attache at the North Korean Embassy in Beijing. He was also the chief of management at Camp 22. In the BBC’s This World documentary, to be broadcast tonight, Hyuk claims he now wants the world to know what is happening. […]
No kidding:
As Eugene reports, Proculian Meditations is a hoot. There’s even more than I thought from reading Eugene’s post! But just when I think it might be serious, I see: Link courtesy of capitalist dupe Larry Lessig. Now if that isn’t parody, what is? Also see: “New age neanderthal Judge Alex Kozinski” and “Ultra-right wing New […]
Our immigration policy:
Many illegals who cross into the United States cannot easily be sent back to their home countries, especially if they do not come from Mexico. Nor is there any jail space to hold them. So what do we do? We release them on their own recognizance. It is estimated that about 6000 people received this […]
Causes of homosexuality?
Looking over that 1984 Heritage item with the Kristol homosexuality / free speech quote, I also saw this, from Midge Decter: [Question:] What explains the sudden prevalence of overt homosexuality? [Decter’s Answer:] One reason for so much homosexuality is the terror that angry, truculent girls and women have introduced into the relations between the sexes. […]
Which came first —
the chicken or the egg? People ask that as if it’s the quintessentially unanswerable question. But of course the answer is clear: The egg. Why? Well, here’s the literal solution: There were eggs — for instance, dinosaur eggs — long before there were chickens. QED. Enough of these lawyer tricks, Volokh, you say. Of course […]
An Extraordinary Fact about Lochner: I am doing final editing on an article in which I state that “between the demise of Lochner in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish in 1937 and the publication of Bernard Siegan’s Economic Liberties and the Constitution in 1980, only a single article that expressed even mild support for Lochner […]
Scarlett Letters:
Grist Magazine, an online environmental journal, recently published this interview with Assistant Interior Secretary Lynn Scarlett. It is worth a read, as it provides some insight into what many in the Bush Administration are trying to accomplish in environmental policy. Scarlett exemplifies the sincere belief of many – though certainly not all – environmental officials […]
A blast from the past:
For a great parody (whether deliberate or accidental) of hard-core Marxism, see Proculian Meditations. It has it all: Pejorative yet mysterious jargon — yes, even “running dog” makes an appearance, and our own Randy Barnett is described as a “crypto-anarchist, pseudo-libertarian” (so deep down inside he’s anarchist, but doesn’t admit it, yet he isn’t really […]
20 questions with Judge Stephen Reinhardt:
On How Appealing this morning. As blog readers might gather, I often disagree quite strenuously with Judge Reinhardt, but it’s very interesting to hear his perspective on things.
Book Tour This Week:
I will be discussing Restoring the Constitution: The Presumption of Liberty, this week in New York, DC & Chicago. Stop by to say hi if you are a Volokh Conspiracy reader (as I imagine you are if you are reading this). I am tentatively scheduled to be on the Milt Rosenberg Show on WGN-AM 720 […]
Balkin on Liberals and Bush:
An interesting post from Jack Balkin on liberals and Bush, though one that assumes that Bush, or at least Karl Rove, is as clever as Jack is, which is possible but unlikely. The basic point–that liberals should think of Bush less as a right-wing ideologue (especially on economic issues) and more as a politician trying […]
A less-unkind cut:
This morning’s NYT reports on an Italian doctor who is proposing a small symbolic cut to replace female genital mutilation, offering a procedure that really is roughly analagous to male circumcision (which the usual forms of female genital cutting are not). The question is, soughly, whether the substitution of a relatively humane procedure performed hygenically […]
European Anti-Semitism:
Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber links to, and endorses, a Financial Times article suggesting that concerns about resurgent European anti-Semitism are significantly overblown. I could dispute Chris’s claims, but the comments to his post do a great job. One point that even these commenters seem to miss: given that only France and England have any […]